After 128 stars in the first part of this game, would that be enough experience to give a review?

I think that I've played about four times, maybe seven total hours, to get all of those stars. If anything, it's making me nervous that the game might be pretty short. Either that, or it could get so hard towards the later challenges that I might not reach 100% completion.

Today, I'm pretty sure I got 45 of those stars, which sounds like 15 challenges, but in some cases, I think I just improved to a three star rating. My focus has been to try and make the same amount of progress in each classic game before switching to the next set of challenges. Part of what makes that difficult is how a new game didn't even become available until this afternoon ("The Legend of Zelda").

The game where I've probably learned the most skills is "Donkey Kong." Keep in mind, you don't actually control Donkey Kong, and the gorilla in this game isn't the main character from "Donkey Kong Country." Instead, I believe you're called "Jumpman," who bears a strong resemblance to miniature Mario. Most of those challenges are teaching you how to jump and avoid getting hit. From what I can tell, the barrels will usually roll downhill across a whole platform, alternating from left to right and right to left. For some reason, the AI must tell them to roll directly down a ladder if you're climbing the ladder or really close to one. There's also a stage where these square "bolts" are holding up parts of the floor. Somehow, unless you unbolt all of them, Donkey Kong won't fall down (but the lower floors stay in place after both bolts are gone). In that series of mini-games, I have all 21 stars, and probably 12 or 15 of them are the kind with the rainbow border. Strangely enough, the ones where I can't get that high/low? score are part 1 and maybe part 3 (which should be pretty easy?).

"Donkey Kong, Jr." must be the sequel to "Donkey Kong"? Now, Mario seems to be the "villain," locking up DK, but you still don't control regular Donkey Kong. You're his son, who can climb ropes and chains. They're trying to teach you to drop fruit on enemies, but I haven't really paid attention to doing that. The trick seems to be finding two vines side by side, since then, you can grab one in each hand and climb much faster. I don't understand some of the enemies and obstacles. It looks like there are mini alligators that hang on the vines. Now that I'm thinking about it, those same creatures might be in the first "Donkey Kong Country" game. Birds fly around. Some kind of spark or water? Why would water be hazardous? I don't like how there's a way to make Mario fall, apparently to his death (halo above his head?).

It might be easier to practice one game at a time? "Donkey Kong" is the only one where I've completed everything so far. The icon with the title screen changed to a gold outline. I know there's also the first "Mario Bros." It's not as complex as the side-scrolling game. There's just one screen that lets you run off to the side and appear back on the other side of the screen. The turtles look like they belong in a Mario game, but what's up with angry crabs and the hopping bugs? I do remember crabs in some Koopa Beach stages of "Mario Kart." The frustrating thing to me in that game is how there are two kinds of jumps. You can't seem to carry any forward momentum when you jump from a standing position (in other words, you'll go straight up). In most Mario games, I'm pretty sure you're always drifting forward. So, you have to factor in some space to run if you want to move forward from a jump. I know I've played "Excitebike," but it's hard to remember. The challenge with that game seems to be popping wheelies or balancing your bike to go over jumps and swerving around the mud or the grass sections. There's also turbo versus regular acceleration. I feel like it should be "cheating" to hold B the whole time on the parts that say to drive toward the finish with A (or it could tell you "Miss" right away).

This game must represent the first time I've played "Balloon Fight" on any platform. There does seem to be a trick to the timing and not losing control. It just feels A LOT harder than even the "rocket barrel" levels from a game like "Donkey Kong Country Returns" that sort of use the same mechanic. Are there a total of six or seven games? In my mind, I can definitely see "Super Mario Bros." and "The Legend of Zelda" is the newest. I've been able to get the furthest in the "Super Mario Bros." challenges. They don't seem to start with the "easiest" one, because how are you supposed to find 15 enemies to defeat as invincible Mario unless you keep running past the sets of stairs? I've done it a few times, but I forget the secret. It's not that fun to keep jumping on goombas and be done in six seconds. "Zelda" is a hard game even when you're not playing the remix. The overworld doesn't really make sense to me. You have those jumping spiders (tektites?) that can move almost anywhere within a split second. I guess, while you're swinging the sword, you have no defense? And then, you have to tap the direction of whatever comes at you to block? I just feel like that game is limited by being two-dimensional, compared to combat in a 3D Zelda game. My pet peeve with the challenges is how they start the timer counting while you're entering a door and waiting for the text to display. Were they trying to be funny with some of the text, or were there limits on the number of letters? "Buy somethin', will ya?!!"

That just leaves the "remix" modes, which keep unlocking without me really playing more than the first ten. I think I have about 18 available, with 135 stars as the next milestone. Those games can be neat, or just strange. Like, the one where it keeps zooming out of "Mario Bros." is annoying, so you need to defeat those enemies to make it go the other way (zooming back in again). If the remixes have more than one step, I'm not sure if I've seen that type of thing yet. It's kind of cool just to have one thing to do, and maybe 25 seconds even if you do it well.

I'm not sure how to get to the Miiverse functions or the eShop from the main screen. It looks like you'd be able to touch them from the GamePad, but I've been using the Pro controller instead. Overall, it feels like the game is kind of a marketing effort for those Virtual Console/eShop titles, but I'm not sure how I feel about that. I believe that all of the games I've been playing (but not the remixes) are on the NES Classic Edition, but those are hard to find at retail price.

I don't even know what the difference is between the first remix and then "NES Remix 2," but I'll probably be back to report on the second part.

By early next year, I'll start "Wind Waker HD," which should be a full-length game, and almost totally "new" to me. I vaguely remember playing a demo in the store during the GameCube days, but I didn't buy the game. In a way, I guess many of the 3D Zelda games are similar, but this will definitely be a unique art style, plus all the water. In other games, I think the most water you see is in a temple or when a certain area is flooded until you clear another part of the game.